Pasini Eases to Fourth Straight Moto2 Pole

Mattia Pasini’s remarkable run of qualifying success continued at Misano with his fourth consecutive Moto2 pole position. The Rimini-born rider, riding in a helmet paying tribute to his late friend Marco Simoncelli, claimed a comfortable pole position ahead of Franco Morbidelli at the circuit located just 2km away from his home town.

The big news story of the weekend unfolded 24 hours before qualifying with Alex Marquez suffering a vicious high-side exiting Quercia on Friday morning. The heavy landing saw the Spaniard suffer a hairline fracture to his pelvis as well as internal bleeding, ruling him out of the rest of the weekend and leaving Morbidelli as the sole Marc VDS entrant.

Morbidelli looked like the man to beat early in the qualifying session, clocking a 1:37.685 eight minutes in, but the championship leader was deprived of pole twenty minutes from time. Pasini, making good use of a slipstream in the third sector, found a quarter of a second on his compatriot’s time and although Morbidelli would improve later on, Pasini had done enough for yet another pole.

Dominique Aegerter produced a fine performance to claim his first front row start since Jerez aboard the Kiefer Suter while 2016 winner Lorenzo Baldassarri snatched fourth with a sensational last flyer. Takaaki Nakagami will start fifth ahead of Francesco Bagnaia with the late improvements relegating Thomas Luthi to seventh, leaving him five spots behind his championship rival.

Simone Corsi starts eighth on the leading Speed Up with Miguel Oliveira the first of the KTMs in ninth, just ahead of Fabio Quartararo.